You know it's SF -- or Elon Musk's PR for why you should pay him to do it -- when humanity is colonizing Mars, has colonized Mars, or is already having a fight or standoff with the already colonized Mars.
But... why?
It doesn't even have a magnetic shielding. Atmosphere is somewhere between "buggerall" and "hardly any". So forget any protection against even the smallest meteorites, or for that matter a good solar flare can give you enough radiation that you won't need to turn on the lights to piss at night. Gravity is barely better than the moon, so you WILL have the same health problems as living long term on the space station, it will just take a longer time. Etc.
Why not, say, Venus? Making a floating city in the upper atmosphere is a rather trivial proposition. Most of you will know the idea, but whoever doesn't, well, look it up. And you have the thick atmosphere to protect you from meteorites and most of the solar radiation. Better yet. if you do spring a leak, it's not gonna lose air particularly quickly, because it's the same pressure inside as outside. It's rather warm up there too. And you have the equivalent of infinite geothermal energy, albeit taking energy from the sharp temperature gradient in the Venusian atmosphere. Just drop a mile long hose downwards and you have energy out the wazoo and/or yin-yang.
Just about the only disadvantage of Venus is that you won't be mining anything. And I don't mean just as in "the surface is too hot to go mining there", but as in, since it periodically melts its whole crust, anything heavier than silica has already sunk to the planet centre.
But... why?
It doesn't even have a magnetic shielding. Atmosphere is somewhere between "buggerall" and "hardly any". So forget any protection against even the smallest meteorites, or for that matter a good solar flare can give you enough radiation that you won't need to turn on the lights to piss at night. Gravity is barely better than the moon, so you WILL have the same health problems as living long term on the space station, it will just take a longer time. Etc.
Why not, say, Venus? Making a floating city in the upper atmosphere is a rather trivial proposition. Most of you will know the idea, but whoever doesn't, well, look it up. And you have the thick atmosphere to protect you from meteorites and most of the solar radiation. Better yet. if you do spring a leak, it's not gonna lose air particularly quickly, because it's the same pressure inside as outside. It's rather warm up there too. And you have the equivalent of infinite geothermal energy, albeit taking energy from the sharp temperature gradient in the Venusian atmosphere. Just drop a mile long hose downwards and you have energy out the wazoo and/or yin-yang.
Just about the only disadvantage of Venus is that you won't be mining anything. And I don't mean just as in "the surface is too hot to go mining there", but as in, since it periodically melts its whole crust, anything heavier than silica has already sunk to the planet centre.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2Ak50rl
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